The pain was the sound of a bell struck once, an all-consuming, perfect note of agony that vibrated through every atom of his being. And then, it was gone. In its place, the world flooded in.
It wasn't the world he knew. This new world was a tapestry woven from threads of raw, crackling energy. He could see the ozone curling from severed power lines, a shimmering purple haze. He could feel the thrum of the emergency lights not as a flicker, but as a rhythmic pulse against his skin. The air, once just air, was now a thick soup of particulate data—the metallic tang of blood, the sharp scent of shattered crystal, the low, bass note of terror rolling off the fleeing crowds.
His own body was a stranger to him. A furnace door had been thrown open in his chest, and a low, constant hum, a miniature version of the wall's dead song, now resonated from his bones. He felt… vast. Empty. A vessel waiting to be filled.
Lina's gasp, a small, sharp sound of pain and fear, cut through the sensory overload. He looked at her, truly looked, and saw not just her pale face but the faint, flickering aura of her life force, a candle flame guttering in a hurricane.
Then he looked at the Shard Hound.
It was no longer just a monster. It was a symphony of alien geometry. He could perceive the intricate, fractal patterns that made up its crystalline hide, the way light refracted through its thousand-faceted eyes. He could feel the cold, predatory hunger radiating from it, not as an emotion, but as a physical pressure, a void that sought to consume the warmth of the living.
The Hound, momentarily startled by the flare of Kael's awakening, shook its head, a gesture that sent a cascade of tiny, musical chimes through the air. Its focus snapped back to the wounded, helpless prey pinned beneath the beam. It took a step, lowering its head to deliver the final, killing bite.
"No."
The word was a croak, a useless sound from a body that didn't feel like his own. But the intent behind it was a physical force. He moved. It wasn't a conscious decision. It was an instinct he never knew he possessed, a deep, primal command to place his body between the predator and the pack. His legs, clumsy and uncooperative, stumbled over the rubble. He was no warrior. He was a technician. But the furnace in his chest roared, and for a half-second, he felt a surge of impossible, desperate strength.
His eyes darted around, and he saw it. A discarded energy blade, dropped by a fallen Defense Force member. Its power cell was cracked, causing it to sputter erratically. He dove for it, his fingers closing around the cold metal grip. The moment he touched it, the energy within the blade surged, syncing with the hum in his own bones. It flared to life, its edge a solid, humming line of coherent light.
The Shard Hound lunged, a blur of blue-white crystal aimed at Lina's exposed throat.
Kael didn't think. He reacted. He threw himself forward, a wild, uncoordinated movement, and thrust the blade upward. He wasn't aiming for a weak spot; he was just putting a weapon where the monster was going to be.
There was no meaty thud. No clang of metal on crystal. There was only a sharp, resonant CRACK, like a pane of glass struck with a hammer. The Hound's lunge stopped dead. It hung in the air for a silent, impossible moment, the energy blade buried to the hilt in its chest. Then, with a sound like a thousand tiny wind chimes falling silent at once, its body dissolved.
It didn't fall apart. It sublimated. The perfect, crystalline form broke down into a swirling cloud of a million shimmering, blue-white motes of light. The particles hung in the air, pulsing with a faint, internal energy, a ghost of the creature that had been. Its Soul Echo.
Kael stared, his mind struggling to process what he'd just done. He felt a strange sense of… loss. He had just extinguished something beautiful.
The cloud of light did not dissipate. It swirled, coalesced, and then, as if drawn by a magnet, it surged toward him.
The first particle that touched his skin felt like a static shock. The second, a needle. When the full cloud hit him, it was an invasion.
Pain, white-hot and absolute, erupted behind his eyes. It wasn't the clean, singular pain of his awakening. This was messy. This was a violation. A torrent of alien information flooded his mind, a thousand years of instinct crammed into a single, brutal second.
The scent of prey on the wind. The thrill of the chase, muscles bunching and releasing. The satisfying crunch of bone. The cold, clear light of two moons in a sky he'd never seen. The pack, the comforting presence of other minds, other hunters. The rage. The hunger. The endless, driving hunger.
He screamed, a raw, animal sound, and fell to his knees, clutching his head. His own memories, his own sense of self—Kael, the technician who liked the quiet hum of the wall, who worried about Lina, who dreamed of the Ancients—was being drowned in the feral, predatory consciousness of the beast he had just killed. He felt his hands twitch, his nails hardening, his teeth aching as if they were trying to elongate. The Echo was a parasite, and it was trying to rewrite its new host.
He was vaguely aware of Lina crying his name, of the ground shaking as something immense moved nearby. The Obsidian Ravager, having finished its demolition of a nearby hab-block, had turned its attention toward them. It saw the new, strange energy signature, the dead Hound, and the two helpless humans. It let out a low, grinding roar and began to advance, a mountain of black crystal and malice.
Kael was lost, drowning in the Hound's soul. He was going to die. They were both going to die.
Then, a sound cut through the chaos, sharper and more violent than any other. It was the sound of a thunderclap, but with no lightning. A figure slammed into the Obsidian Ravager's side with the force of a transport crashing into a wall.
The newcomer was a Frame User, but he was unlike any Kael had ever seen. His armor wasn't the polished, standard-issue plate of the Defense Force. It was a brutal, customized assembly of scarred, mismatched plates, reinforced with thick, industrial-looking pistons and cabling. He wielded a massive hammer that seemed to be made from the engine block of a pre-Fall vehicle.
This was Jax. And he was a master.
He moved with a brutal, economic grace. He didn't just fight; he solved problems. A short, sharp burst of energy from his boots—a spatial shift—and he was behind a Shard Hound, his hammer coming down in a devastating arc that shattered it instantly. He didn't wait for the Echo to dissipate. He was already moving, his movements punctuated by the percussive blasts of his hammer and the jarring, instantaneous shifts in his position. He was a whirlwind of controlled violence.
The Obsidian Ravager, enraged by this new challenge, swung a fist the size of a boulder. Jax didn't try to block it. He stomped his foot, and a wave of kinetic force erupted from the ground, deflecting the blow just enough for him to slip past. He moved with an intelligence that was as terrifying as his power.
He forced the Ravager back, step by step, his relentless assault giving the behemoth no time to retaliate. Finally, with a guttural roar, the Ravager smashed a new hole in a nearby wall and retreated back into the Grey Waste, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.
Silence fell over their small section of the battlefield, broken only by the distant sounds of fighting and Kael's own ragged gasps.
Jax stood for a moment, his breath misting in the air. He surveyed the scene, his gaze sweeping over the rubble, the dead, and then, it locked onto Kael. His eyes, visible through his scarred helmet, narrowed. He saw the spot where the Shard Hound had died, saw the last few motes of its Echo being absorbed into Kael's convulsing body. He recognized the scene for what it was. A traumatic awakening. A forced, uncontrolled absorption. A death sentence.
He strode over, his heavy boots crunching on the broken ferrocrete. He barked into his comms, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. "Med-team to my position. Sector Gamma-9. Two casualties. One critical, one… complicated."
Kael's vision was tunneling, the world dissolving into a blur of red emergency lights and swirling dust. He was losing the battle against the beast in his soul. The last thing he saw before the darkness took him completely was the grim, scarred face of the veteran Frame User looming over him, his expression not one of pity, but of cold, hard assessment. It was the face of Kael's new, terrifying reality.